From beginning his career as a comedian with the Saturday Night Live gang, Adam Sandler has gone on to have one of the most lucrative careers in Hollywood with his films earning a combined gross of over $2 billion at the box office. The question as to whether he has the talent to warrant these sums of money has been posed for many years - indeed, it's hard to think of a single Adam Sandler vehicle in which his performance has stood out as anything other than the usual combination of mugging and shouting whilst telling crude and childish jokes. Only Punch-Drunk Love breaks the mould, and that's perhaps in large part down to director Paul Thomas Anderson challenging Sandler to doing something different. Even the executives at Sony are getting sick and tired of Sandler's schtick, with the recent internal email leaks revealing the star as a shameless exploiter of his status in order to shower himself and his friends with lavish private jets and other extravagant perks whilst producing one mediocre movie after another. Sadly, audiences keep buying tickets for his films despite their deteriorating quality, so more terrible Sandler performances are inevitable.
